Pretoria - Barefoot, wearing just a shirt and hugging one of his five dogs, 60-year-old Desmond Smit watched in silence while police searched and later removed the body of his embalmed mother from his home at the weekend.

Paris - Scientists will be thrilled by any data the new US mission to Mars gets that points to abundant water on Mars even if, at present, we only know it to be ice rather than liquid and located at the poles.

Blantyre - Malawi’s President Bingu wa Mutharika has temporarily abandoned his controversial $100m palace in the administrative capital Lilongwe because he is being haunted by ghosts, a top aide said on Saturday.

The incident has left tongues wagging in the area amidst widely held speculation that the wind could have been an act of witchcraft by jealous people allegedly envious of the extensive renovations made to the house.

Word around the location was that this old man was a witch. And because nobody seemed to know much about him, suspicions about him were rife, and he was always spoken about in terms of an unexplained aura and stigma.